Research on the process model of product development with uncertainty based on activity overlapping

Abstract

The essence of competition among modern enterprises is time; hence the time for product development must be greatly reduced. This paper presents a new process model of product development with uncertainty based on activity overlapping, borrowing ideas from the uncertainty model and activity overlapping model proposed by Loch and Terwiesch, and Krishnan respectively, to realize reduction on the time. Besides the fundamental framework of the proposed model, some derivations on the formula computing the total execution time of upstream and downstream activities are made. The effectiveness of the proposed model is verified through some further discussions and initial computational results.